Sunday Lectures: Expiry Dates, Howler Monkeys, and Fastballs

Get smart without getting out of bed.

Sunday Lectures is a weekly roundup of the internet’s most interesting educational videos. Get smarter without getting out of bed.

Eileen Pollack: “The Only Woman in the Room”

Gender disparities in science have come a long way — women weren’t allowed to practice medicine until the 1900s — but the field is still very much a boys’ club, as Eileen Pollack explains. As one of the first women to graduate from Yale with a degree in physics, she’s seen social, interpersonal, and institutional barriers hold other women back when change was supposedly underway.

Calls vs. balls: An evolutionary trade-off

Call it the monkey equivalent of souped-up cars and thousand-dollar watches: A recent study on howler monkeys found that the tiniest testes were correlated with the loudest shrieks. Here, Dr. Jacob Dunn of Cambridge University discusses this evolutionary trade-off.

Is It Unsafe To Take Expired Medicine?

We’re used to thinking expiration dates are mere suggestions. Hummus doesn’t actually go bad, right? (Wrong.) Eating old snacks might land you a date with loperamide, but taking expired prescription meds could land you back in the hospital.

America Needs Talent: What It Will Take For A Second American Century

Jamie Merisotis, author of America Needs Talent, has had enough of America’s dropping wages and increasing unemployment rates. The U.S., he thinks, is long overdue for a second era of success. Ushering that in will require policymakers, private businesses, and educators to make a concerted effort to grow talent.

How To Hit a Fastball

As the Toronto Blue Jays unfortunately illustrated this past week, it’s really fucking hard to hit a fastball. They probably should have watched this video first.